


Imagination, lessons and reality

by AlannaGuerrero



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlannaGuerrero/pseuds/AlannaGuerrero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why the Harry Potter world is not a good example for kids, but I will probably read the books to my own child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imagination, lessons and reality

**Author's Note:**

> Everything you know belongs to J.K. Rowling

The world in which the Harry Potter books develop is a wonderful place, full of laughter, magic, beauty and love. It seems like the a great place to start a child's interaction with fictional characters and a whole new world of posibilities; castles, flying brooms, shapshifters and games, it's all fun.

 

_Except, of course, when it isn't._

 

After all, it is the story of an orphan, whose parents were killed by a mad supremacist who is after him, and who was at least to some extent abused by his caregivers. People play and fight, love and hate, scream and whisper.

Still, in the end, good triumphes over evil.

It is a nice lesson that resonates with kids, whose knowledge of fairy tales might make them relate the notions of bad and losing and good and winning.

 

But beyond that definitive theme, there are some, everyday lessons presented as perfect truths in the books that might seem simple enough to children reading them but that would be entirely wrong if they try to apply them to their lifes.

For me, those are:

 **1\. Those who are ugly are always bad.**  
Even if it's never explicitly stated, there is a constant link between the ugly and the bad in the books. From the very start the descriptions of Petunia, Vernon and Dudley are over the top, their exterior are just a way to show how awful they are in general and towards Harry.

Then there is Snape, who is spidery, oily, dirty, and not even his redeeming moments lets him of the hook, he is ugly even while crying for the love he lost. Even though he rutinely tries to save Harry and his friends from danger, even though he is recognized as a capable wizard, it all takes second place to his appearance, most readers will see him as bad until the dramatic redemption is revealed.

Most Slytherins are described as ugly, dark, they are and will always be seen as bad.

Voldemort himself is physically hideous, transforming from his beautiful looks into the presence he later has. His outer shell is a manifestation of his inner ugliness, his evil.

All this characters are not simply plain or even ugly in an average, everyday way, they are over the top, they are gross and disgusting.

These are the bad people. With the notable exception of Narcissa Malfoy, who is described as beautiful (even with her nose wrinkled in distaste), the Bad Guys are unkept, unbecoming: ugly.

**2\. Name calling is OK, if you are doing it.**

Harry and his friends name call many times, in banter and in anger.

Winky the house elf, calls Dobby a common goblin, which might even be racist (or speciest?) when we know that goblins are a separate species in this Universe, in charge of money, no less. Hermione herself insults Umbridge, calling her stupid. Ron repeatedly insults Snape and Malfoy, the ferret.

They are barely chastised, no lectures are given, promises of better behavior are extrated. All is forgotten.

But the others, they don't get off so easily.

Malfoy himself, a pathetic bully with no real power over his peers, takes to name calling. But he is corrected, at least by doppelgänger Moody, flipped into a ferret and shook about in the air. What comes if it? That's right, nothing.

Snape is a nasty character in the books, repeatedly calling his charges dunderheads, but he is hated by all. He is properly "punished". He is never, even after apologies, truly forgiven.

**3\. The rich are mostly bad, the poor are good.**

**4\. Like father, like son or the apple doesn't fall far from the tree**. It's stated that entire generations of families have acted "a certain way", they have all been evil, they have all been good. There might be one of two in a hundred years who rebel, but even then, the family keeps its ways.

**5\. It's OK to use animals to insult people.**

**6\. You can judge people by how they look.**

**7\. Girls can overrule boys' boundaries.**

This is one of the most angering tropes in the whole books, at the moment for me because I have a son and I have had to deal with the lack of respect for their personal agency and autonomy people have for boys.

Harry, in the books, was about to be given Amortentia, which is esentially a drug to make him fall in love, by a girl. She was not punished for this.

Neither was Merope Gaunt, who by some unknown means made Tom Riddle Sr. fall in love with her and agree to marry her, in fact she even got herself pregnant by him.


End file.
